When We Rise

by Cleve Jones

  The production team leased a huge old hangar space on Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay to house our operations. I heard the sound of a skateboard and looked up to see young Mr. Hirsch skating towards me. I didn’t really know what to say. I wanted to like him and I wanted him to like me. I knew that if the film was a success Emile and I could be linked together to some extent for the rest of our lives, for better or for worse.

  We got in my pickup and drove over the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, and I was reminded of my first journey across that span in the summer of 1972. I decided to show Emile Polk Street, the Tenderloin, Civic Center Plaza where we had burned the police cars, Haight Street, and, of course, Castro.

  As we drove up and down the hills of San Francisco I told Emile stories from my life. I could tell that he was studying my mannerisms, and suddenly, while braking for a red light, I realized that I was trying to butch it up. I was doing what so many gay people do when unsure if it is safe to act and speak naturally. As this realization set in, I was appalled. It was just wrong, on so many levels. I was embarrassed for myself. “Enough driving, Emile, let’s go to my place and I’ll cook you some dinner.”

  The production company had rented me a small apartment in Noe Valley, just over the hill from the Castro. I cooked some pasta, opened a bottle of red wine, and said to Emile, “Listen to me. I’m a queen and I’m not ashamed of that. I’m proud of it actually. But I don’t want to be a cartoon queen, a caricature.” He nodded and I think he understood exactly what I meant.

  Years later, people ask me what I thought of Emile’s performance and I always answer, “I’m Cleve Jones and I endorse this portrayal. But I was taller.”

  I was hired as historical consultant and we started filming very early on the morning of January 21, 2008, thirty years after Harvey Milk took office. The weather report said there was a 40 percent chance of showers, but it was pouring rain as the crew assembled in the Excelsior District, Dan White’s neighborhood. Lance and I huddled under a tent drinking coffee and watching the downpour, feeling badly for the crew as they scrambled to get ready.

  Then, at the appointed hour, the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and a giant rainbow appeared in the sky over San Francisco. Lance grinned and pointed. “No one will believe this when we tell them.”

  The first scene we shot was the scene in the old firehouse of Engine Company #43 where Dan White announced his candidacy for the Board of Supervisors. Josh Brolin was the last actor to sign on, as the part of Dan White was originally to have been played by Matt Damon. We all agreed that Damon was the perfect choice to play the all-American boy turned assassin. But Damon had a scheduling conflict and Josh Brolin stepped in. I’d only had a brief meeting with him while the cute young costume designer, Danny Glicker, was fitting him. I didn’t have any basis to judge Brolin’s acting but I told Gus Van Sant that I just didn’t see him as Dan White.

  When the camera crew and Gus were ready, Josh Brolin walked over to the set from his trailer. As he passed, my hair stood on end and I felt a slight wave of nausea. It was Dan White. Brolin gave me a look and said, “So? Does it work?”

  He was brilliant and even in that first scene captured Dan White’s petulance, entitlement, and insecurity.

  When we broke for lunch, the cast and crew lined up to pile their plates and I found a seat. Brolin sat down across from me and I almost couldn’t eat. It was like going to a deli, ordering a bagel with lox, and having Hitler sit down at your table.

  Production designer Bill Groom and Art Director Charley Beal transformed the Castro Street of 2008 back in time three decades and re-created Harvey’s Castro Camera in the actual space it had occupied. Newer residents of the neighborhood and old-timers watched the production with great interest and some of Harvey’s oldest friends became fixtures on set and got cameo appearances in the film, including Gilbert Baker, Harvey’s speechwriter Frank Robinson, and the old Teamsters organizer Allan Baird. Allan’s wife had been born in the building next door to Castro Camera, long before the gay invasion of the Castro.

  The production also employed large numbers of “extras,” especially for the many crowd scenes. Recreating the candlelight march of November 27, 1978, was particularly emotional for me and for everyone else involved. Between takes, young people crowded me to ask about those days and older people approached me to remind me of moments they had shared with me long ago. Many of the younger ones expressed regret that they had missed the excitement of the early days of the movement. The older ones expressed amazement that we had survived when so many more had not.

  The last scene was shot on March 17 on a set constructed on Treasure Island with the help of the San Francisco Opera. It’s the death scene from Tosca. We were all a bit drunk. Cinematographer Harris Savides was having a great time. A big bouncy man, he giggled as he called for yet another take and poor Catherine Cook, as Tosca, hurled herself from the balcony one more time.

  At the outset of filming I got the call sheet with the name and position of every member of the cast and crew, from the lead actors and producers to camera operators, sound, gaffers, riggers, truck drivers, hair, makeup, and medics. I decided I would try to meet and speak with every single person associated with the production, and with very few exceptions I did. Producers Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks and everyone else associated with the production showed me great respect and kindness. They were a remarkably talented group and I was deeply moved by how seriously they took their jobs. They all knew that this was a film that could matter, a film with the power to change, and maybe even save, lives.

  CHAPTER 34

  Proposition 8

  AFTER THE PRODUCTION WRAPPED I PACKED UP MY PICKUP TRUCK with my clothes and a hot young man I’d met named Benjamin. He had no place better to go, and we drove back to Palm Springs, with me regretting every passing mile. The past four months spent on Castro Street had reminded me of my love for the neighborhood and the city.

  Back in the desert I crawled into bed and did not want to get out. In San Francisco there was never any possibility of loneliness or boredom—all one had to do was open the door and go outside. True, the landscape contained many emotional landmines, terrible reminders of the scale of loss we had endured. But we had endured and somehow, we had moved forward. I had survived and now, back in my little house in Palm Springs, I missed my city and I missed my street.

  One month later, Sean Penn called. “Hey, Cleve. Want to go to Coachella with me?”

  He had the craziest plan and wanted me to help. We would lease three biodiesel buses and drive 150 volunteers from Coachella to New Orleans to volunteer for two weeks in the Ninth Ward. Almost three years after Hurricane Katrina, the city was still devastated. Sean had been there shortly after the storm and was angry that so much of the city remained destroyed.

  Paul Tollet, founder of the Coachella Festival, agreed to let him speak from the main stage. I worked with Sean’s assistant and close friend Sato Masuzawa to coordinate the effort. It was crazy from the get-go. We were to leave the day after the festival closed. I got to sit in the wings onstage for a long and amazing set by Prince. The next night it was Roger Waters performing all of “Dark Side of the Moon” and “Wish You Were Here.” It was beautifully disorienting to hear the music of my youth performed for this new generation and accompanied by the modern technology of light and sound. James Franco and Emile Hirsh were both there and it was fun to see them again.

  Sato Masuzawa and I would both get close to complete nervous breakdowns before we successfully got 150 festivalgoers to New Orleans and back. The “Dirty Hands Caravan” spent our first night camped outside of Tucson and participated in an AIDS walk the next morning. Then we drove to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Sean flew in Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar activist who had lost her son Casey four years earlier in the Iraq War. The caravan kids listened to her attentively, but eyebrows all around the campfire went up when she asserted that there was no difference between Nancy Pelosi and Dick Cheney.

 
; We got to Austin on May 1 and joined an immigration reform march to the state capitol. It brought back memories of Ricardo, and I was glad I had Ben to cuddle that night. We stopped in Houston and participated in a riverside park cleanup before heading on to New Orleans. I’ll just say it was all kinds of crazy. Some of the kids in the caravan were just idiots. Some were there to work hard. Some came without shoes. Others brought acid as if the Ninth Ward was a great place to walk around while tripping.

  One night in a bar in the French Quarter, the manager let us have a private room upstairs. There was a beautiful young blonde woman behind the bar; when I asked her for a drink she handed me a bottle of vodka. When we left, she went with us. It took me an hour or two to realize she wasn’t some random waitress; she was Rod Stewart’s daughter Kimberly. We hit it off and I told her how much it had meant to me as a young rocker kid when her father recorded “The Killing of Georgie,” a song inspired by the bashing death of a gay friend of Stewart’s. I told her to be sure to tell her dad that she’d met an old gay guy who still remembered that song.

  Driving back with Ben along the Gulf Coast, my cell phone rang and it was Kimberly. “What was it you wanted me to tell my father?” she asked.

  I started to reply and she cut me off, “Here, tell him yourself,” and passed the phone to her father. I nearly drove off the road.

  After a pretty dramatic few months I now had time to focus more on my work with UNITE HERE. I don’t think anyone in my entire family has ever crossed a picket line. My sister and I were raised to support labor unions and workers. It was clear to me that the decline in union power was bad news, not just for workers but for feminists, environmentalist, LGBT activists, and liberal Democrats—for it was the unions who had the financial resources and bodies to back these causes with the necessary resources. UNITE HERE excited me because it was winning real victories in the private sector. When we won, the housekeepers in the big hotels and casinos went home with more money, had access to better health care, and were treated with respect on the job.

  As the vocabulary of identity politics became more pervasive, I saw the union movement as a unifying force even as the rhetoric on the left grew more divisive and distracting. It was inspiring to see our members, native-born and immigrants alike, struggle together for safer working conditions and better pay. It was refreshing to see a militant and democratic union that refused to be divided by race, ethnicity, gender, or citizenship.

  I started to visit more UNITE HERE affiliates throughout the US and Canada. In some cities, I held trainings with members and staff about LGBT issues. In others, I enlisted the support of LGBT organizations for specific organizing campaigns and boycotts.

  Dave Glaser called to tell me that Doug Manchester, owner of the nonunion Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, had contributed $125,000 to the campaign for Proposition 8. In fact, his contribution helped underwrite the signature drive campaign to put Prop. 8 on the ballot—the Republican-led effort to overturn the California Supreme Court’s ruling that same-sex marriages were a right under the state constitution. Manchester was a piece of work—an extremely conservative Republican and local bigwig who funded all sorts of right-wing causes and asked people to call him “Papa Doug.”

  I asked Glaser if this was an early birthday present.

  UNITE HERE matched Papa Doug’s contribution with $125,000 to the NO on 8 campaign and I worked with local LGBT activists, feminists, and immigrant rights advocates to launch a boycott of his hotel. It takes about two hours to drive from Palm Springs through the desert mountains to San Diego and I made the trip frequently to meet with UNITE HERE Local 30’s dynamic leader, Bridgette Browning, and the members and staff of the union.

  Ultimately, the boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt cost Papa Doug over $10 million in conference business alone. There’s no way to calculate the revenue lost from individual travelers.

  UNITE HERE was the first union to endorse Barack Obama for president and the first union to call for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in all matters governed by civil law. We were also one of the first unions to negotiate collective bargaining agreements that included protection from discrimination based on gender identity and expression as well as sexual orientation. In every interaction I had with transgender people, their top three issues were always personal safety, access to health care, and employment. I was proud that our union was winning protections for transgender workers, even in conservative states of the South.

  The summer of 2008 ended, and the country began to focus on the coming election and the showdown between Barack Obama and John McCain. In California, the LGBT community and our allies were busy with the NO on Prop. 8 campaign. The campaign was closely controlled by a handful of leaders from the community’s major organizations—Equality California, National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Los Angeles LGBT Center—and a few others who raised and spent over $44 million, more than the proponents.

  As the fall began most of the people I spoke with thought that we would defeat Prop. 8 easily. The leaders of the campaign were confident and spoke in terms of increasing the margin of victory. But there were warning signs.

  As Election Day approached, I spoke with Maria Elena Durazo, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and a strong supporter of LGBT rights. One of the most important labor leaders in the country, she spent summers as a youth working in the fields and was inspired by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. She worked with the United Farm Workers and in 1989 was elected president of UNITE HERE Local 11.

  “Cleve, I’m worried,” she said. “The Obama campaign has registered thousands of new first-time young black and Latino voters. They’re bombarded with Yes on 8 messages from the churches but not hearing the other side. It’s like the No on 8 folks are taking them for granted or ignoring them. That would be a mistake.”

  On a trip up to the Bay Area my sister commented on how many No on 8 TV spots she saw. That registered with me, because in Palm Springs one could see plenty of No on 8 lawn signs and bumper strips in the downtown area, but the rest of Riverside County was awash in Yes on 8 messages, and I saw their TV ads every time I sat down to watch.

  I asked one of the leaders of No on 8 why the campaign was buying expensive airtime in the super-liberal Bay Area but not in conservative Riverside County. He responded that the wealthy donors in the Bay Area needed to see the ads to feel good about their contributions. That left me scratching my head.

  Nonetheless, my friends and I were confident of a win in California and signed up to go to Nevada to assist the Obama campaign. Dustin Lance Black and I and many of our friends from Milk all drove over to work for Obama in Las Vegas. My friend Jack Gribbon, a veteran organizer with UNITE HERE Local 2 in San Francisco and one of the union’s strongest political strategists, was sent to organize the get-out-the-vote effort we were running in Washoe County. I walked precincts in and around Reno.

  In California, voters were receiving computerized telephone robocalls from the Yes on 8 campaign featuring the voice of Barack Obama saying that he believed marriage was between one man and one woman.

  CHAPTER 35

  New Life

  IN NOVEMBER 2008 THREE THINGS HAPPENED THAT WOULD CHANGE the destiny of LGBT people throughout the United States and affect the lives of millions more around the world.

  On Wednesday, November 5, the world awoke to the news that Barack Hussein Obama had been elected 44th President of the United States of America, a milestone that will be remembered for as long as the nation exists. One can be as cynical as one wants about politics and politicians, but the election of Barack Obama showed millions of Americans, especially younger people, that change was possible. A black man was in the White House.

  That same morning we learned that 52 percent of California voters had voted Yes on Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage. Young LGBT people, the new generation coming up after the AIDS years, were bitch-slapped with the reality of the vote. Poor kids, they had thou
ght they already were equal.

  And after premiering in San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, Gus Van Sant’s Milk was released to almost a thousand theaters across the country to critical acclaim. Young people learned of a statewide campaign that had won—thirty years before—and of a history they had not been taught in school.

  Those young people, and quite a few of the grey-haired set, poured into the streets by the tens of thousands in big cities and small towns across America to protest the Proposition 8 vote. I watched, amazed, as the protests grew and spread. There had been protests in 1998 after the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard but they hadn’t lasted long, and the passionate activism of the AIDS era was a dimming memory for most.

  Two young women who’d met in college were outraged by the passage of Prop. 8. Three days after the vote Willow Witte and Amy Balliett created a group called Join the Impact and launched a website. They called for a national day of protest the following week. A new generation of activists responded to the call. Large—sometimes massive—demonstrations occurred in over four hundred cities, all fifty states, and in ten countries, and they kept on. A young student in San Diego named Sara Beth Brooks and her roommates created a Facebook event page and turned out twenty thousand marchers. She was just one of hundreds like her who took to Facebook and other social media to organize.

  A few weeks after the election, Lance and I were talking about the defeat. We both agreed we needed to put a stop to the endless ping-pong game of referenda and initiatives. Every victory won was impermanent and incomplete, subject to reversal by popular votes and never included the full equality that could only come from federal action. We coauthored an editorial for the San Francisco Chronicle arguing that it was time to look to the federal courts and our new president and the Congress, where the Democrats controlled both the Senate and the House. It didn’t get much attention.